LEADER OF A EUROPEAN INQUIRY INTO THE RULE OF LAW IN MALTA SAYS THE ISLAND NATION'S POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE IS "ROTTEN" -- "60 MINUTES" SUNDAY

The smallest nation in the European Union is earning an unsavoury reputation. Ana Maria Gomes, the leader of an EU parliamentary inquiry into this tiny Mediterranean country, blames the situation on Malta's politics, which she says are "rotten." Jon Wertheim reports from the Mediterranean country for the next edition of 60 MINUTES Sunday Dec. 23 (7:30-8:30 PM, ET/7:00-8:00 PM, PT) on the CBS Television Network.

"Such a great people, such a proud history," says Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament. "But I must say that, at the moment, indeed, the political atmosphere is rotten."

She and others in the EU are sounding the alarm about a series of scandals involving allegations of bribery, cronyism and money laundering among top Maltese officials. Gomes believes the current government is encouraging an atmosphere of impunity.

"The system is basically flawed, because the Prime Minister ultimately controls the attorney general, who also controls the police," Gomes tells Wertheim. "Nobody's being tried. And of course, the sense of impunity is being fuelled by this fact. And it affects us all."

Gomes is also concerned about the state of an investigation into the high-profile assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who chronicled organized crime and government corruption in the country's major newspapers and then on her blog, "Running Commentary." "Daphne," as she came to be known, earned a devoted following for her writing, as well as libel suits, vilification by government officials, and years of death threats. On the afternoon of October 16th, 2017, she got in her car and set off for the bank, when a powerful car bomb placed under her seat was went off.

Her son, Matthew, says that such a violent and public assassination was meant as a warning both to his family, and to all those who would follow in her footsteps. "Obviously it was a way of killing my mother. A way of sending a message to us. To our family," he says. "And a way of sending a message to anyone else who was thinking of doing anything about the really grand corruption in this country."

Daphne's death seems to have had the opposite effect, bringing international attention on the tiny country, and the problems she spent her career working to expose. There have been multiple recent inquiries by a variety of European authorities raising serious questions about corruption, money laundering and the rule of law inside Malta.

What would justice look like to Matthew? "When all the corrupt people that she was reporting on, treating our country as a gigantic trough which they're feeding from for years," he tells Wertheim. "When they've paid the price for that, then there will be justice for my mother's stories. But there also has to be justice for her murder, too."

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